The phrase
burst out of a seven-year-old girl who was brimming with hope and anticipation.
It fell on the ears of her forty-year-old father: “Dad, let’s play fairies!”
Here was an invitation to intimacy, to quality time, to everything that
parenting was supposed to be.

The man almost
gave a knee-jerk reply, something like: “I’m sorry, kiddo, I’m busy right now.”
But instead he checked himself. It would have been an excuse. Sure, the man had
a lot on his mind. But he had heard recently a study that showed that American
parents only play with their children, on average, for twenty minutes per week!
And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon, and next thing you know, you’ve
long since retired and your kid has moved away and is just like you. “Not me,”
he thought to himself. “I’m not going to be that
dad today!”

Sir Joseph Noel Paton, The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania (Wikimedia)

But neither
could he throw himself into playing fairies with abandon. He wasn’t going to go
all Mr. Banks, get fired from his stuffy, selfish job, and spend all night
mending a kite. So feeling too weary to play but too guilty not to, he hedged.
“Hmmm … playing fairies? Well, what would that be like?”

The little
girl was too young to really roll her eyes, but he heard a preview of that
phase in her reply: “Dad, you know! I’ll be Silvermist and you can be Oberon.”

Oh, if only it
could be so easy. For this man remembered being a child, possessing the natural
ability to play in just this way, taking on a character and immersing himself
in a fantasy world. Every day at recess, he had been Luke Skywalker! And then,
somewhere along the line, that creative, playful impulse grew up and became
much harder to capture. So how about a board game instead? Or a card game?
Something with legitimate rules to follow? No, not stuffed animals—what would they
say or do? This man desperately wanted to spend time with his daughter, but he
wanted to do it on his own terms. And it turns out that he was exactly like
those in the generation of Jesus. (Stick with me on this.)

Jesus said to
the crowd, “To what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting
in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you,
and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’” The problem with
Jesus’ generation was that they would only play on their own terms. I suspect
the problem wasn’t limited to that generation, either.

What does it
mean only to play on our own terms? The comparison Jesus makes is a strange
one, and he does so in order to call out those who have been bad-mouthing not
only him but also John the Baptist. They gripe about John, the grumpy,
teetotaling radical, and then they gripe about Jesus, who drinks plenty of wine
and hangs out with all the wrong people. Why are they OK with neither one?

To illustrate
his point, Jesus compares his critics to children in the marketplace who begin
by playing games but who end in an argument. One group wants to play wedding,
and the other wants to play funeral. Both groups are too obstinate to
compromise, and as a result, they miss out on the one thing they set out to do
in the first place: to play! Instead, we might imagine a schoolyard scuffle
breaking out, resulting in bloody noses and broken friendships.

In response to
his critics’ grumbling, Jesus gives an invitation: “Come to me, all you that
are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Grumbling is
a very heavy burden. So is needing to be in control, and choosing the game
ourselves, and failing to use our imaginations. Living an abundant life in God’s
world takes imagination, but these critics could not imagine the vision Jesus offered
them.

Yet can we be
held accountable? Is it really our own responsibility to lay down this burden?
When I try to let go of control, often I find that I can’t. When I try to
muster more imagination, sometimes I find only futility. Paul got it right: “I
do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the
very thing I hate.” Why must we always seek to be in control? Why do we cling
to our pride? Why is it so hard to suspend our need to be right? Sometimes we even
decide we’d rather not love at all than leave our comfort zone. Graham Greene
once wrote, “Hate is a lack of imagination.”

Laying down
this burden is not easy. We will fail to do it time and time again. But circumstances
keep conspiring to give us another chance. And in the times when, with God’s
help, we do manage to lay down our burden, wonderful, graceful things can
result. Relationships can deepen. Unforgettable memories can be carved. People can
be helped. Justice can be done. God can be honored. To relax into the
invitation to play means to let go of our self-consciousness and play this
God-given game called life. Kids get it, says Jesus. God has hidden these
things from the supposedly wise grownups and revealed them to the youngest
among us. They never hesitate to play—their play is their work, and vice versa.
We can, indeed, learn from our children, not just about how to play but also
about Christian practice. A friend of mine once commented, “Kids do ministry
like they do breathing.”

Yet maturity
is also to be valued. Kids play, but they also fight, and bully each other, and
selfishly cling to whatever it is they most want to do. Kids throw temper tantrums.
Adults have known what it is to play, but hopefully, we have also learned what
it is to set aside our own agenda and play someone else’s game for a while. We
can always draw on the unique wisdom of each of our previous ages.

It may feel
like this takes boundless energy. But what if it’s not up to us to conjure all
that energy? Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in
heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Oxen are yoked together
by twos—imagine that you and Jesus are carrying a yoke together. Who is
shouldering the greater share of the burden? Or imagine a bicycle built for
two. Who is the stronger pedaler—you or Jesus? “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

And what is
the nature of this yoke that Jesus offers? We take it upon ourselves by meeting
Jesus in Scripture. We absorb the complex and beautiful person Jesus is, and in
so doing, we let the living Christ speak to us in our own day. We hear his
words about the Kingdom of God, and we begin to imagine it. Then we take on
this yoke in service—in meeting others precisely where they are and learning
from them. As we help provide for some of their needs, we also find our own
spirits strengthened. The yoke of love—a love that is centered on God’s dream
for the world—is a yoke we take on ourselves, not a yoke others place on us. We
carry a burden we choose to carry—like in that old song, “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s
My Brother.”

The burden of
loving is a burden that can feel so light we don’t necessarily notice it … or,
at other times, so heavy that it demands our very lives. We walk the path Jesus
walked. It’s not necessarily the kind of path people appreciate or give honor
to. But then, Jesus never did go in for conventional glory. When it came time
to ride into Jerusalem, he did so on a donkey, drawing a direct connection to the
prophet Zechariah: “Lo,
your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a
donkey.” Who knew that fulfilling prophecy could be so playful? And Jesus’ unbridled
compassion was free of pretense and social correctness, and this is one reason
his followers began to identify him with the God the Father and to worship him:
“The LORD is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great
kindness. The LORD is loving to everyone and his compassion is over all his
works.” So when Jesus invites us to play, we don’t need to muster any
energy in particular. We need only lay down our burden and say, “Here I am.”

Jesus invites
us to exchange many burdens—distracted busy-ness, self-conscious pride, helplessness,
smug certainty—for the more playful yet often arduous work of really loving
each other. Hopefully, if we let go of our need to control everything, we can
continue to carry the yoke in faith, knowing that even when it leads to a place
of death, it will also lead through death into new life. When I look at it this
way, I can see that everything I do in life involves a decision about whether
to cling to my own crippling burdens, or to accept Jesus’ yoke instead.

So if you’re
striving hard to earn God’s love, you’re wasting your energy. That’s like
striving to make water wet, or striving to make gravity take effect on Earth.
God’s love is not something to strive for, but something to relax into. There
are many other things to strive for in life. Let the never-failing love of God
serve as your main source of fuel.

But back to
the man and his daughter. It’s been a few years, and fairies don’t come up as
often in conversation, though Legos and dragons do. And stuffed animals still
play a role: the stuffed cats have even formed their own ninja training school.
The man is still busy a lot of the time, but slowly, gently, he is learning to
play again. It hasn’t been a born-again experience, like it was for Mr. Banks
in Mary Poppins. It’s been slow and
gradual—two steps forward, one step back. But that creativity of childhood
isn’t gone; it’s just showing up in new ways, only one of which is a dedication
to play with his little girl. Amen.